AUC Logic Lectures: Alexandru Baltag on "Logic Goes Viral - the fate of truth in the age of information"

16Oct2017
18:00 - 19:00

Lecture

This is an invitation to reflect on the successes and failures of collective rationality, particularly as embodied in modern mechanisms for mass information-aggregation-and-exchange (media, markets, voting, social networks, crowdsourcing). What are the nature, sources and dynamics of “collective knowledge”? Do the benefits provided by ''the wisdom of the crowds" outweigh the dangers posed by the stupidity or even ''madness" of the crowds? Do the above-mentioned aggregation mechanisms fulfill their epistemic promises (helping us acquire relevant information and take better collective decisions), or do they end up creating their own pseudo-reality (as exemplified by echo-chambers, ''fake news" and ''alternative facts"), leading in the end only to catastrophic mass delusions and self-defeating protest votes?
Can Logic and Philosophy help us understand this dilemma? Can Computer science help us verify and ''debug" our social software, diagnose its weaknesses and provide tools for social-informational ''mechanism design", that could be used to prevent the worst forms of ''groupthink"? Can ''epistemic democracy" actually work and endure? Will the ''facts" (the actual facts) eventually emerge from the noisy networks of irrelevant data, self-confirming rumors and self-congratulatory 'likes'? Or, to put it more bluntly: will 'truth' (the real truth) survive the ''information age"?

AUC invites both students, staff and external visitors to this public lecture.

Speaker:

Dr. Alexandru Balltag is connected to the UvA Institute for Logic, Language and Computation

Venue:

Common Room
Amsterdam University College
Science Park 113, Amsterdam 1098XG